


Another Day in Quicksand

by VforVitaly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VforVitaly/pseuds/VforVitaly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being with Derek Hale puts Stiles at great risk at the hands of those looking to take down an Alpha, but no matter what comes at him, Stiles refuses to be a part of the downfall of his friends, or the man that he loves, despite the price he has to pay to protect his pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Teen Wolf chapter story, so I hope it's alright? I'm not 100% sure where it's going, but hopefully somewhere AMAZING.
> 
> Title taken from the song Another Day in Quicksand, by In Flames.

            “Tell us where to find Derek Hale.”

            “Not a fucking chance.” Stiles looked up from the chair he was tied to and shook his head. He had a black eye, his shirt was ripped and stained with blood, and he’d looked a lot better, but the fire in him was still there.

            “I know you know where he is,” the man hissed. “Now fucking tell me, or I’m going to kill you.”

            “Good idea,” Stiles stated sarcastically. “Show me all your cards, why don’t you? Besides, what’s to stop you from killing me when I tell you?”

            “Because it’s not you we’re after, kid, it’s him. If you give us what we want, we’ll let you go.”

            “Well too bad,” Stiles stated, struggling, testing the strength of the ropes binding his bleeding wrists for the millionth time since he woke up bound to this chair. “I’m not going to tell you anything. You can grill me all you want, but I will never tell you what you want to know.”

            “We’ll see about that.” The man scoffed, shaking his head, reaching back and punching Stiles in the jaw.

            It hurt. It hurt one hell of a lot, but nowhere near enough for Stiles to give up Derek. He may not have been a wolf, but he was just as strong in heart as anyone else in the pack, and he’d been hurt in their name before. Maybe saying that he was used to it was one thing.

            “You think that’s all it takes? Hit me a few times and I’ll give him up?” Stiles shook his head.

            “I’m going to give you one last chance,” he stated. “You can tell us, and we’ll let you go.”

            “But you’ll kill him?” Stiles asked, looking up at the men in front of him, eyeing the room before making direct eye contact with the man speaking to him.

            “Yes.” The man nodded.

            “Okay.” Stiles nodded. “Look, you could kill me a thousand times over, and you’ll never find him. Never. I made sure of that.”

            “You made sure of that?” The man scoffed. “You think you, a scrawny little human, will stop us from finding him?”

            “Absolutely.” Stiles nodded. “And I’m never going to tell you, so really, it doesn’t matter.”

            “Okay, suit yourself.” The man turned to one of his accomplices, taking a bucket from his hand. He walked to Stiles and turned the bucket – filled with ice and water, onto the young man’s head.

            Stiles gulped, because while the cold, icy water was momentarily soothing to his open wounds, it was freezing, and he knew they weren’t going to give him a chance to dry off, unless he gave them what they wanted, maybe even then.

            “Tell us where he is,” the man stated. “And we’ll let you take a warm shower, give you fresh clothes, and send you on your way.”

            “F-fine.” Stiles looked up at the man, shivering, teeth chattering. “C-Come closer, and I’ll t-tell you.”

            The man moved closer and Stiles leaned up as best he could, whispering in his ear.

            “I will never, _never_ let you hurt the people that I love.”

            He spit in the man’s face, and that was the last thing he remembered before the butt of a gun made contact with his head, knocking him unconscious. 


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the first official chapter! I hope you enjoy it!  
> thischapterismostlyfluff.

THREE WEEKS EARLIER

 

            “Hey.” Stiles threw his backpack into the backseat of Derek’s Camaro before climbing into the front seat, leaning forwards, stealing a quick kiss from his boyfriend before they pulled out of the school parking lot.

            Stiles and Derek had spent the last 2 years dancing around each other, and pretending that the tension between them was nothing, but the night that Stiles turned 18, Derek let himself in through Stiles’ bedroom window and told him everything that he had been keeping back for the last two years, only to find that Stiles felt the exact same things. The two of them had been together ever since, and while plenty of people frowned upon it, Stiles was 18 now, and could do what he wanted, make his own choices, and he had chosen Derek.

            “How was school?” Derek asked.

            “I’m just ready for it to be over.” Stiles shrugged. There were only a couple of weeks left to his senior year, and he was more than over high school. He was dealing with real world shit – hell, _more_ than real world shit, all of the time, he didn’t really think it was necessary for him to be sitting behind a stupid desk in a stupid high school.

            “Well you’re almost done.” Derek reached out, one hand still on the steering wheel as he drove, and put his hand on Stiles’ knee, giving it a gentle squeeze that brought a smile to the other man’s face.

            “I know, I know. Sorry. As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to complain about things I can’t change…”      

            “It’s alright.” Derek shrugged.

            “Okay, what’s up with you?” Stiles asked, tilting his head to the side. Derek’s hand was still on his knee, and he liked that, but there was just something odd about the whole way that Derek was holding himself, and Stiles wanted to know what it was. He really didn’t like being kept out of the loop. Ever.

            “Well…there’s um…on the news, there was word of three bodies being found cut in half about three towns over from here,” Derek admitted.

            “Hunters?” Stiles asked instantly. Just because the Argent’s had all but taken themselves out of the game didn’t mean that there weren’t other people who didn’t know about werewolves.

            “Yeah, and from the sound of it, they don’t really discriminate between “good wolf” and “bad wolf.”

            “Hey, Dr. Who!” Stiles stated, instantly realizing that was a stupid thing to say. “Sorry, really not the right time for that.”

            “No, really not.”

            “Okay, as you were saying?”

            “They’re ruthless.”

            “Yeah, but so were the Argent’s before we sat them down and talked to them,” Stiles pointed out, hoping that maybe Derek was just overanalyzing this, because as sick as Stiles was of high school, he was far more sick of all of the danger that he and his friends, and especially his boyfriend, were in all of the time.

            “The people, well, the wolves that they found?” Derek pulled over to the side of the road, looking Stiles right in the eyes. “They were a family. A mother, a father, and child.”

            “Oh my god.” Stiles gulped, falling silent, because while there wasn’t a lot that could the words right out of the young man, it was stuff like this. This was serious business, and if they were only three towns over, it was really only a matter of time until they were in Beacon Hills, wasn’t it.

            “They’re coming, Stiles,” Derek said. “Whether we like it or not.”

            “So we’ll be ready for them,” Stiles said adamantly.

            “We’ll be as ready as we can be. The pack is stronger, we’re all stronger, so hopefully that will help, but Stiles, I want you to stay out of this.”

            “What do you mean?” Stiles frowned. “They’re hunting wolves, I’m not a wolf.”

            “They killed a child, damnit!” Derek looked sidelong at his boyfriend.

            “Alright, okay.” Stiles nodded, looking over to Derek. “I’ll be careful, okay? I’ll be careful, but they’re not here yet, and as long as they’re not in town, let me help you prepare for them, alright?”

            “What are you going to do?” Derek asked. He wasn’t asking sarcastically, as though he didn’t believe that there was anything that Stiles _could_ do, because he knew full well by now not to estimate the brilliant young man beside him. It didn’t seem to matter that Stiles couldn’t run with the wolves, that he couldn’t fight like them, because every single one of them would have been dead by now if it weren’t for Stiles, and Derek knew that – the whole pack knew that.

            “What I do best,” Stiles said with a smirk. “Research.”

\----------------------------

            The pack meeting had long since been over, and Derek was asleep in the double bed they shared on Fridays and Saturdays. Moving into his new apartment had been good for both of them, and it made the Sheriff feel just a little bit better about letting his son stay the night with Derek. While it was clear to everyone that Stiles’ dad would rather have him at home, he also didn’t want to do anything that would push away his now legal-adult of a son, he loved Stiles too much for that, and honestly, in the world of things that could be happening, sleeping with someone five years older who loved him? It wasn’t that bad.

            Stiles, though, couldn’t sleep, so he got up and went to the desk, opening his laptop and getting to work on more research. If these hunters were coming, and coming in fast, he didn’t want anything to happen to his friends. He wanted to be able to protect them, and while putting himself physically between a werewolf and a werewolf hunter would be one of the stupidest things that he could do.

            When Derek woke up, he reached deftly for Stiles, only to find that he wasn’t there. He frowned and sat up, groaning when he saw Stiles, asleep, bent over the desk, his cheek on the keyboard of the laptop, the letter ‘g’ typed a million times into a google searchbar as a page about aconite sat, open, on the screen.

            He walked over and gently removed Stiles from the desk, carrying him back to the bed. He would wake him, scold him, for staying up so late, but he knew that Stiles was just finding a way to protect them, and he appreciated that. That no matter what happened, no matter how much shit Stiles got dragged into that would never have involved him otherwise, he was always the one trying to protect everybody else.

            Derek curled his arms around Stiles, and though he was wide awake, he knew that Stiles needed his sleep, and he fully intended to remain there, cuddled with his boyfriend.

            “I love you,” Derek whispered as Stiles shifted in his arms, cuddling closer to Derek on instinct alone. “I love you, and your hyper-vigilance, and your determination to make sure everyone goes home at the end of the day, no matter how tough things get.” He placed a soft kiss on the back of Stiles’ neck, and Stiles smiled in his sleep.

            Maybe it was a weird relationship to some, especially those who had known how much they bickered and fought before, but there are some things you can’t go through without forging a bond, and being stuck in a swimming pool for two hours with someone, just trying to stay alive, was one of those things. Fighting psycho werewolves, lizard monsters, and crazy old men? That was another. Neither man was sure exactly when it had happened, but at some point during the trials of the last two years, they had both realized they would do anything for the other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if it's kind of dragging, but I have a solid idea of where it's going, so I guess that's good?


	3. Chapter Two

            Stiles had spent pretty much every waking moment preparing for the hunters that they knew were coming. He had done all of the research that he could think of, all of the facts had been laid out before him, and when the facts had failed to yield any kind of real answer for how to protect themselves, at least other than what they already knew, Stiles had turned to the fiction.

            He had spent hours poring over old texts that had been scanned online, trying to find the answers that he wanted, because he didn’t want to watch his friends, his Derek, die at the hands of a merciless pack of hunters that wouldn’t listen to reason. Sure, they didn’t know when they would be there, and he supposed that there was a chance they wouldn’t even show up, but if they did, he wanted everyone to be ready.

            Derek had been taking precautions, too. The pack had been training hard, longer, and far more aggressively than ever before, and while they were out running and working out, Stiles was at home, the bags under his eyes growing more and more every day, as he researched every possible answer, every little thing that could potentially keep his friends safe.

            It was that research that led him to a spell, an ancient spell, but one that was supposed to protect from enemies, and everything that it required, well, he had access to. It was simple herbs and plants – rosemary, sage, bark dust from an oak tree (which he had acquired by putting fresh oak-bark through his family’s electronic pencil sharpener), and words. He had gathered the “ingredients,” and they sat in a small pile on his desk. No one else was home, no one else was around, and honestly, he felt a little stupid. He was supposed to enchant the “ingredients,” and then they would be able to protect you from enemies? He wasn’t sure if he believed it, but he had to give it a shot.

            “Here goes nothing,” he mumbled, honestly glad that he was alone for this, because even with werewolves and Kanima’s and the like running around, he wasn’t really sure how he felt about magic. Then again, he’d made the mountain ash last longer than it should have, so maybe there was something to this. He closed his eyes, his hand hovering over the bowl with the plants in it, just like the scanned image said, his heart racing, as he said the words.

            He felt nothing, and he opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Come on, Stiles,” he muttered. “You gotta believe. This shit doesn’t work if you don’t believe, just come on. Do this for them, okay? Do this for Derek. You can protect him with this.”

            He closed his eyes again, put his hand over the bowl, and said the words low, quiet, under his breath, and that time, he felt something. He felt something course through his body, something he had never felt before. It felt good, it felt strange, and most oddly of all, perhaps, it felt powerful. Stiles had never felt that way in his entire life, so to feel it now, even for just a second, he wasn’t really sure what to make of that, all he knew was that he had to get more of this stuff, because that feeling, that surge of power, told him that somehow, some way, his spell had worked.

\-----------------------------------------------

            “What are you doing?” Derek put his hands on his hips, looking at Stiles as he worked at Derek’s house, switching out the front door knob.

            “Um…” he bit his lip. “If I tell you, will you promise not to laugh…or get mad?” 

            “Did you break my door knob?” Derek asked.

            “No, it’s not that exactly.” He finished replacing the doorknob, and Derek led him inside, gesturing for Stiles to sit down on the couch. He did, and Derek joined him, slinging an arm around him, pulling him closer.

            “So, crazy, what’d you do to my doorknob?” he asked, kissing to top of Stiles’ head.

            “I was doing research, you know, to help prepare us for the hunters, you know, assuming they come, and I found this spell.”

            “A spell?” Derek looked down at Stiles. “Seriously?”

            “Yes!” He nodded. “It required, you know, ingredients, so maybe it’s more like a spell/potion combination, but I did it, Derek.”

            “What?” Derek looked at Stiles, dumfounded.

            “Yeah, it’s this thing, I put it in the doorknob, I don’t know how it works, exactly, but it’ll keep your enemies away, I just…I wanted you to be safe.” Stiles studied Derek’s face, trying to read the expression, but it wasn’t one that he had ever seen on his boyfriend before, and as a result, he had absolutely no idea what that meant. “Derek, say something.”

            “You…you did magic?” Derek asked.

            “Um, yes?”

            “Are you sure?”

            “I guess, I mean, I’m not 100% sure, but I felt something when I said the spell, I felt, I dunno, powerful?” He shrugged.

            “Oh my god.”

            “What’s wrong?” Stiles looked at Derek, still trying to gauge the emotions expressed on his face, but he couldn’t.”Derek, what is it?”

            “Not just anyone can do magic, Stiles,” Derek said finally.

            “What do you mean?”

            “It’s a gift, it’s something I hadn’t even heard about in a long time. We’d always just assumed the last of the witches were dead. No one’s made any reports of real magic being used in a long, long time, Stiles.”

            “Yeah, but I mean, you wouldn’t necessarily hear about it, would you?” Stiles asked, shifting uncomfortably.           

            “I mean, I suppose it’s possible that I wouldn’t have, but Stiles, you didn’t _just_ do magic. You opened up a connection between yourself and that world, and I have no idea how you did that, but I know people who have tried, some, even, who so hard to be something they weren’t that it killed them, and you did it in an afternoon?”           

            “I uh…” he bit his lip. “It’s not the first time.”

            “What?” Derek’s eyes widened.

            “I mean, I don’t think it is. At the rave last year, with the mountain ash. I ran out. There wasn’t enough to circle the whole place in the bag, and I closed my eyes, and I hoped and hoped that it would somehow be enough, and somehow, it was,” he admitted.

            “That’s incredible,” Derek whispered.           

            “So…you’re not…you’re not mad?” Stiles asked, just wanting to make sure that he wasn’t misreading things.

            “Absolutely not.” He shook his head. “Witches have been historically very bad for werewolves. They can destroy us without even touching us, and to have one on my side…” Derek smiled down at his boyfriend. “Just be careful, okay?”

            “Careful?”

            “Yes.” He nodded. “Like anything else…supernatural, magic, I’m sure, can be draining. Just be careful.”

            “I only did it to protect you,” Stiles admitted, looking at Derek. “I just, I love you, and I felt so helpless, and we know they’re coming, it’s just a matter of time, and I just want to be able to help you, Derek.”           

            “Hey…” Derek reached down, cupping Stiles’ chin in his hand. “I love you, too,” he said softly. “And what you did today, it was amazing, and you’re not helpless, even without this, you’ve always been an asset to me, you’ve saved my life as many times as I’ve saved yours, and now…well,” he leaned in, so close to Stiles. “You have the potential to become more powerful than an alpha. More powerful than any of us. Just-”

            “Be careful?” Stiles asked, tilting his head to the side.

            “Exactly.”

            Derek leaned in the rest of the way, capturing Stiles in a kiss, and Stiles returned it, finally feeling able to do something for Derek, for Scott, for the pack – something real, something helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so I'm not sure how everyone feels about the Stiles/Magic thing, but I'd read it a bit in other stories, and I think it's cool, so I'm going with it, I hope that's okay! :D

**Author's Note:**

> Also, feedback would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
